On the initiative of Mathieu Roche, member of the LIRIMA Scientific Council, a workshop on digital agriculture in Africa was organized in Montpellier on April 3 & 4, 2018. This workshop was held in CIRAD buildings and was organized by UMR TETIS and LIRIMA with a support from #DigitAg.
In order to promote the development and deployment of digital agriculture in France, Europe and the countries of the South, the Convergence Institute for Digital Agriculture #DigitAg (http://www.hdigitag.fr) is indeed proposing an interdisciplinary research project focused on the promotion of research on these topics and on higher education.
Despite the transportation strikes almost all registered participants were able to make the trip to Montpellier. However, two presentations had to be made via videoconference, but the exchanges were very smooth thanks to the assistance of CIRAD technicians.
Two LIRIMA teams had the opportunity to present their work: AGRINET on “Smart agriculture monitoring” and EPITAG on “Modelling and control in epidemiology for tropical agriculture”.
A round table was organized around the challenges and specificities of Big-Data in Africa. The list of talks can be found on the website: http://lirima.inria.fr/fr/seminaires/francais-seminaire-agriculture-numerique-en-afrique/
According to the participants, this meeting was very interesting and stimulating. Some follow-up to this initiative are under consideration. First, we envisage a second workshop on this topic, preferably organized in Africa. Also we are looking at means to support some emerging collaborations between CIRAD, Inria and African partners on digital agriculture ; some of which might subsequently give rise to new LIRIMA teams.
